GOP Finance Committee member: ‘It’s insane not to use the Rainy Day Fund’

Count Sen. Kevin Eltife as one Republican member of the Senate Finance Committee who thinks it’s crazy to solve the state’s huge budget shortfall with nothing but cuts to programs and services.

Sen.

Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler

“We have to find more revenue,” the former Tyler mayor and senator of seven years said this morning during a committee hearing. “It’s insane not use the Rainy Day Fund. We also have to find additional revenue.”

Republican leaders have been adamant about not raising additional revenue and Gov. Rick Perry insisted again in his state of the State address this week that “we must protect the Rainy Day Fund.”

There is about $9.4 billion in that fund, but Perry said it’s “a bad idea” to use it for recurring expenses.

Most Democratic legislators favor using the Rainy Day Fund and raising additional revenue to close a $27 billion budget shortfall necessary to keep current services and programs and to pay for growth, such as an additional 170,000 students entering Texas public schools over the next two years.

The Senate Finance Committee has heard appeals from parents of children with disabilities and other distressing reports about the impact of severe budget cuts on human services, including health care. The committee is now in the process of hearing testimony about cuts to education.

“We have an investment in public education, higher education and health and human services,” Eltife said. “We have got to find the revenue to make these cuts less of a burden on Texans.

“There’s no other way to do this. We can dance around it all we want and talk about – oh, is it revenue, is it a tax, is it this, is it that? We have to find additional revenue,” he said. “We have to share the pain with cuts and revenue and the Rainy Day Fun. And any other idea in this building is crazy to me.”